All language subtitles for MasterClass Danny Elfman Teaches Music For Film - 03.Starting Your Score_ The Spotting Session

[MUSIC PLAYING]

INSTRUCTOR: Depending
on the film,

the beginning is officially
the spotting session.

You sit with the editor,
and sometimes the producer,

and certainly, the director.

And you run the
film top to bottom.

And in running the film top to
bottom, you find every moment.

Music starts here.

Music starts here.

It runs 2 minutes
and 15 seconds,

and it kind of comes out here.

Now you give that a number,
and the number is based--

again, this is an
antiquated system,

but it's still how we do it.

It might be-- it's in the
first reel of the film.

So it's the fifth
piece of music.

So it's 1m05.

Reel 1, music 5.

And I'll encourage the director
during the spotting session

to talk about it a little bit.

Tell me the thing
you're concerned about.

So I've had spotting sessions
that take two days, where

literally, the director wants
to talk about it so much,

we can only spot half
the movie in one day

and half on the next day.

It happens, and that's
just director to director.

And the other extreme
would be Tim Burton,

who, if the movie
is an hour 45 long,

the spotting session
will be an hour 55.

He doesn't like to
talk about the movie.

He just doesn't like
to talk about it.

So I'll encourage him to
say something about the cue.

So he might just go,
make sure this is sad,

or make sure this gets
really hopeful here.

OK, next.

And so we're basically
just starting and stopping

and really defining
music starts,

music stops, giving it
a name and a number.

I should add that the
really important thing

about the spotting session
is everybody now knows

how long the score is.

And there's a huge
budgetary condition

because it's abstract.

Well, we think there's
about 60 minutes of music,

but the spotting comes in at 75.

Everybody's got to adjust the
budget and the number of days

of recording for 75
minutes, rather than 60.

Or it's the other way.

Well, the music only
came in at 51 minutes.

OK, we're actually really good,
or we could even maybe give up

one session.

So from the studio
standpoint, this

is actually a very
important moment

because they're going
to get a number.

And that number is going to
tell them how many sessions,

how big of an orchestra.

And there's a huge budgetary
process that has to happen,

and that also begins with
the spotting session.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Temp music is the bane
of every composer.

And that's a huge part
of a composer's job.

Now, some directors are
remarkably unconnected,

disconnected from
the temp music.

And that is just like having
a huge weight lifted off

of my shoulders when I
sit down with the director

and I'm looking at a
film for the first time.

Because usually, the
very first time I see it,

it's going to have a temp score.

Because I'm actually looking
at some kind of preview

cut that they're
generally looking at.

Sometimes it's not.

Like, again, some directors
are just literally showing me

the film on an editing machine.

And I'll say, just play me
a cue you're in love with.

And so I don't want to hear
anything that you don't think

is really important.

I just want to hear
the ones that you're

getting attached to.

Because I want to know
what kind of battle

I'm going to have ahead of me.

So it's not uncommon for a
first viewing to have, like,

three or four half a dozen
temp moments and the rest out.

Sometimes I'm looking at,
like, a rough preview,

where there's a full temp
score from beginning to end.

And I will hope never
to see it again.

They may have been working
on this film for a year

before I got there, and
they've been hearing a temp

score for close to a year--

parts of it for a year and parts
of it maybe for half a year.

An animation-- that
could be two years.

So, what you got to
do is two things.

There's two ways to go about it.

You can do what I might
conservatively say

70% of the composers today do.

And they just do the temp.

Take it, you find
another way to do it.

You have the exact tempo.

You actually map the tempo
out of the temp score,

and you do something else to
the same temp, hitting things--

different piece of
music, different melody,

but you're going to
do the same thing.

That is bullshit.

And I know it works for some
people, but it's bullshit.

It's not doing your job.

Your job is to come up with
something fresh and new.

And yeah, there's
a certain point

where the director
could beat you down

by refusing your music two
times, five times, seven times,

10 times.

And eventually,
you go, all right.

I'll try to understand what
the fucking temp is doing

and see how I can modify
mine to do something,

at least close enough that
it connects with a director.

But that's the misery of the
job, as far as I'm concerned.

And sometimes you
simply have no choice.

But you try.

You got to try.

You got to try to get in
there, and shake it all away.

Make it all disappear.

And the only thing I might
pay attention from the temp

is where, OK, a director
got used to hitting

a certain thing I go, OK.

He really wants to
hit this moment, fine.

I'll hit this moment.

I don't have a
problem with that.

Because I could take any
piece of music I do any time

and make it hit a moment.

Occasionally, there's something
that's not big and obvious,

but the director
feels like they want

to hit this or this particular
moment a certain way.

And you gotta
learn these things.

So this is a problem
every composer

has to face all the time.

The cheap way out is
just follow the temp.

The hard way out is put up
this fierce, polite fight.

And by fierce, meaning when
you're fierce with a director,

you have to do it in
a very careful way.

Because if you just come off as
arrogant and fiercely attached

to your own ways, the director
is going to equally dig in,

and you're going to end up
coming to a real problem.

So the way you do it fiercely
is to simply fiercely commit

yourself to come up with
something really good

that you believe
in and see if you

could find an easy way to pull
your director into that world.

Do variations of it.

Show I could take this melody,
I could take this thing

and turn it into
this type of moment.

I could turn it into
that type of moment.

And then the director
might go, oh, that's nice.

So they may not be sold on
this moment I'm showing them,

but I've already
shown them a moment

towards the end of the
film, and they love that.

And now they're coming back
to the first one and going,

I'm there.

I've got it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Scoring a film with
big or small resources

is not even something I give two
thoughts about because if it's

a $200 million movie,
first off, they

can still cry to you about
the size of the orchestra.

I mean, it's amazing.

Really big orchestras and big
films, big budgets, and I've

been asked, can you please cut
four players out of the violin

section?

But the point is,
is that you're going

to encounter potentially
every kind of big, small,

in between during your careers.

If it's a tiny budget,
which I've done many of,

I'm going, all right.

We can actually afford seven
musicians for two days.

And I can use three
or four musicians

for one of the sessions
beyond that for solos,

or three or four soloists.

And I go, that's my budget.

No big deal.

What I advise you is don't try
to do what they did in the '80s

and into the '90s and
emulate orchestra sound

with synthetic orchestras.

That's crap.

It's always been crap,
and it's still crap.

To cut costs and not degrade
the quality of your work,

I believe you think small.

Other than that,
its inventiveness.

I mean, there's great
scores from small ensembles

from inventive composers.

And to show invention
is a great thing

if you can show that you
can work with a tiny budget

and do a very inventive score
with interesting sounds.

Obviously, if you're
into synthetics,

that could really help
you there because there's

no limit to what you can do.

But even with real instruments,
get a lot out of a few players.

I think that's really useful.

If you need to present
a big orchestral sound

and you have no
budget, you're screwed.

I mean, I played
demos all the time

for people that
are all synthetic.

Every director-- here
is my entire score,

fully orchestrated in
demo form before it

goes to the scoring stage.

But that's just for
a director to hear.

That's a facsimile.

I did a movie that
the director wanted

a particularly kind of a
romantic, lush sound out

of the strings.

The movie was
called "Hitchcock,"

and he wanted a score
that felt like it

was connected to the era.

And he wanted very warm strings,
and he wanted a lot of romance

in it.

And that's the kind
of score that my demos

are delivering the least
amount of satisfaction

to the director.

He kept wanting
warmth, warmth, warmer.

And I was playing these demos,
and I kept saying to him,

I can't get warmth
out of samples.

Trust me, it's just going to
be a whole different thing.

And he was nervous right
up until the first scoring

session.

It was in London, and
we're sitting there

for the first cue.

And I could just see his
whole body language relax

because he's like listening.

He's worried, he's worrying,
and it started playing.

And he just settled in,
and he barely said anything

for the rest of the scoring.

It was more than what
he was hoping for,

because the warmth of
the real strings filling

the room for this
particular score

was something that I
just couldn't give him

synthetically.